Wall Street Journal By Louise Radnofsky, Alicia A. Caldwell and Andrew Duehren 6/25/2019
A top U.S. border-enforcement official resigned amid growing clamor about the treatment of migrant children in U.S. custody, while Congress wrestled over billions of dollars in funding to address the surge of Central American families seeking asylum at the southwest border.
John Sanders, acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, submitted his resignation to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, effective late next week. He didn’t give a reason for his departure, but people familiar with the agency’s leadership said Mr. Sanders had been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and the frequent changes in personnel and policy direction inside the Trump administration.
President Trump said Tuesday that he hadn’t spoken with Mr. Sanders about his resignation but that he knew of coming personnel changes at CBP. That raised the possibility of a new reshuffle involving Mark Morgan, installed a few weeks ago as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House had previously sought to elevate Mr. Morgan at CBP, according to a former U.S. official.
The CBP has been one of the agencies charged with responding to the flow of adults and children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Trump administration has said this migration by people fleeing violence and poverty has brought the U.S.’s border infrastructure to a breaking point, and the surge has ignited an explosive public debate amid reports of worsening conditions of detained immigrants and several deaths of children in U.S. custody.
The changes in immigration-enforcement leadership come as attorneys and doctors have reported on squalid conditions at a holding facility in Clint, Texas, including disease outbreaks and dirty, hungry children caring for other children.
A CBP official said Tuesday that after hundreds of children were moved to a temporary tent facility in nearby El Paso over the weekend and into Monday, about 100 children were moved back to Clint on Tuesday.
The official said he “didn’t buy†some of the more egregious allegations about conditions in Clint, including that children said they didn’t have access to food.
More:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-sanders-resigns-as-head-of-customs-and-border-protection-11561481664
